Recently, a Canadian online newspaper reported that two brothers have been jailed for 16 months due to the cyberbullying and sexual exploitation of a 14-year old girl[1]. The cyberbullying had a great impact on the girl over a long period of time. After being victimized for 10 months, the girl still feels frightened and demonstrates symptoms of extreme anxiety. Additionally, last year, two American girls were arrested in relation to the death of a 12-year-old girl who committed suicide after being bullied online for months[2]. Those two girls allegedly sent the victim messages on Facebook calling her ugly.

The two cases above are examples of cyberbullying among adolescents. Cyberbullying has been shown to be a serious concern due to the mental distress and psychological harm it causes (Strasburger et al., 2013). As the concern also relates to social media use among adolescents, it is debatable if social media contribute to bullying behavior among adolescents. Bullying itself is defined as aggressive behavior that is intended to repeatedly hurt an individual who cannot defend her/himself both in physical or non-physical forms (Olweus, 2012).

However, social media enthusiasts who perceive social media as a new tool believe that social media benefit adolescents. They argue that bullying behavior among adolescents has nothing to do with social media. Studies conducted by Valkenburg et al (2006) and Smith et al (2008) found that the use of social media among adolescents positively correlates with self-esteem. Adolescents who have positive face-to-face relationships view interaction in social media as a reflection of the offline relationships and use social media as an additional venue to communicate. Therefore one should be wary of drawing the conclusion that social media contribute to bullying behavior among adolescents. Continue reading “Social Media and Aggressive Behavior: Case Study Analysis on Cyberbullying Among Adolescents”→

TALKING about Father’s Day, it’s just too emotional for me. We didn’t talk a lot as He has 9 kids. He never congratulated me when I was consistently placed in the 1st ranked at school, whereas other kids got new bike when they were only 10th ranked. It took hours for me to ask some money for books and stuff. Hence it drove me to make money on my own since I was 9. Both of us just never express love to each other. It’s just different… We even didn’t have picture together. And all of the sudden He passed away when he was 73 and I was 16.

Things happened for a reason. And I do believe he’s now happy in a better place out there. Allahhummaghfir lahu warhamhu wa’aafihi wa’fu anhu.

I’ve been blogging since June 2007 right after one of my best friends back home taught me how to create one. At first, alike most newbies, I didn’t even know what to write and what to tell. However, since I was studying communication science and has a lot of writing assignments, I basically just uploaded all those stuff on my blog, lol. To be honest, I was quite happy because many people came to my blog even just for the sake of copying my writings (about communication science). I’m happy to share and I don’t give a shit whether they’re gonna put my name on the reference list or not.

And today is the national day of blogger in Indonesia. And it’s already 7 years in total of my existence in Indonesia blogsphere. It’s not easy to maintain consistency to keep writing on regular basis. In early years, I used to update my blog at least once a week. Back then there was no twitter, no hype of facebook and bla bla bla. Visiting blogs used to kinda my favorite activity every night. Commenting and knowing the authors were such lovely enjoyment for me. Continue reading “National Blogger Day”→

SO, finally I’ve got chance to compile pieces of my scandiplus trip stories last summer. During the trip, I shared everything on Path or Facebook due to its effectiveness and real-time. Obviously, no point to write such long story when you’re enjoying your moment, right? I call this trip as #ScandiPlus Trip: Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Estonia. This trip is another getaway with a light backpack (7 kg) to 11 cities within 7 countries. Don’t expect this post will tell a lot of stories. It’s just random puzzle.